Dead can Dance

Today and tomorrow the Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico: 'The country vigorously embraces its dead during these days. It drinks, sings and dances with them. This is the most ostentatious festivity of the year—more exuberant than either Easter or Christmas. It illustrates the special relationship that Mexico seems to have with death—a laughing, mocking familiarity that is embodied in the portrayal of grinning paper mache skeletons performing life’s everyday tasks. Dancing on someone’s grave, an action that carries such negative connotations in the rest of the Christian world, here represents a reaching out of the living to the dead, a reunion in the most festive spirit' (Oaxaca Times).

While on the subject of Oaxaca and remembering the dead, it is the first anniversary this week of the killing there of indymedia journalist Brad Will and three protestors during an uprising.